Five classifications? OSAA to take long look at changing six-class system

Randy Nyquist, who has coached West Albany to three Class 5A football finals, is among those against a move to five classifications. (James W. Prichard/special to The Oregonian/2009)

Few would dispute that expanding from four classifications to six in 2006 achieved its most desired effects for the Oregon School Activities Association. More schools are in position to be competitive, and more teams and athletes are enjoying postseason success.

But as the OSAA’s classification and districting committee begins plotting for the four-year time block that starts in 2014-15, a push for change is building momentum.

Disgruntled by the scheduling complications that have arisen from smaller leagues and hybrid districts in the six-classification alignment, many schools are advocating for a move to five classes. That sentiment was apparent Monday at the DoubleTree Lloyd Center when the committee heard public testimony for the first time.

“Clearly there are a lot of people in favor of five classifications,” said OSAA assistant executive director Pete Weber, a liaison to the committee. “We’ve heard it loud and clear from especially our large schools, particularly 6A, for a couple of years. We’re certainly going to look long and hard at five. We’re also going to still look at six and see if there are things we can do.”

When the five-class idea was presented at the Oregon Athletic Directors Association in April, it was favored by a vote of 139-42. Many schools that have been a part of hybrids – leagues composed of schools from multiple classifications in geographic proximity – believe it is time to try a different approach.

“We don’t like the hybrids. We think that the experiment has failed,” said Dave Hood, athletic director at Mountain View, a Class 5A school in Bend. “We would just like to see bigger leagues. I think that’s healthier for competition. We would rather see five classes.”

Athletic directors in Class 6A -- which has two eight-team leagues, four six-team leagues and a two-team special district – also appear to be on board.

“I think all of the 6A would like to see five classifications,” Sunset athletic director Pete Lukich said. “The overriding theme is we’d like to see larger leagues. Ten schools are too many, but eight is a really nice number.”

Smaller leagues mean that schools must schedule more nonleague games, which can be a difficult chore for some because of their location. The old four-class system had bigger leagues, which not only made scheduling easier for most schools but strengthened the fabric of competition between schools.

By going to five classes, Hermiston athletic director Mike Kay said, “I think there’s some great potential to go back to a more traditional look with eight-team leagues and do some things that have been done traditionally in the past.”

In basketball, for example, six-team leagues have made schools choose between playing three or two rounds of league play. The Class 6A Metro League has switched from two rounds to three and back to two. Neither plan is optimal.

“It’s nice in basketball if your league season is all in January and February,” Lukich said. “Right now we don’t have to start until Jan. 20 or so. And all the coaches hated playing each other three times when we had the longer season.”

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The classification and districting committee is scheduled to meet seven more times before making a final recommendation to the OSAA executive board in Sept. 2013. After that, the state championship committee will take over and formulate a postseason plan.

“If we go to five classes, we will solve some problems and probably create some other ones,” OSAA executive director Tom Welter said. “We should be able to solve the hybrid problem, which people have some dissatisfaction with, but we might create some other problems in certain geographic areas, depending on where the cut-off points are between classes.”

For the committee, it is important to determine the number of classifications relatively early in the process because it is the framework for the entire alignment.

“Everything else will come from that,” Welter said. “We’ll float out a trial balloon going one direction, just to see what kind of feedback we’ll get.”

Mountain View’s Hood and Bend athletic director Craig Walker began sketching a five-classification draft at the state athletic director’s conference in April.

Tim Sam and Dennis Murphy, athletic directors at North Medford and South Medford, respectively, took that sketch and have made a few tweaks. They presented a working draft to league representatives at an OADA meeting Oct. 21 in Wilsonville.

“What we’re trying to do is get folks thinking about what it is they want in their leagues and their classifications,” Sam said. “We know we’re not going to get 100 percent everybody on board, but what we did leave agreeing is that people believe that a five-classification system would be beneficial.”

Not everyone agrees, though.

Class 4A athletic directors voted in a block against the five-classification concept in the April meeting. Stayton athletic director Evan Brown, the 4A representative for the OADA, told the committee Monday that the classification is likely to be cut in half and many of the schools with enrollments near 600 will end up in leagues with schools nearly twice that size.

“We feel like the 4A class is pretty much going to get destroyed,” Brown said.

Silverton principal Mark Hannan, who represents Class 5A on the classification and districting committee, said the eight schools in the Mid-Willamette Conference are opposed to the five-classification concept.

West Albany football coach Randy Nyquist, whose team dropped from the big-school division in 2006 and has appeared in three Class 5A finals, winning two, is among those who prefer the six-classification system.

“I’d love to stay 5A. It’s been a really good deal for us,” Nyquist said. “It’s given a lot of teams at the 5A level an opportunity to be successful and be in the playoffs, and once they get into the playoffs, to have a chance to win. I don’t see very many 5A schools jumping up there and pushing Lake Oswego or Sheldon aside and saying, ‘It’s our turn.’”

Football drives much of the conversation because of its physical nature and safety implications. Hood said that one possibility is a five-classification system with an exception for football – dividing Class 5A between Division I and Division II.

“I certainly would be in favor of that,” Hood said.

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Competitive balance was the driving force behind the OSAA scrapping the four-classification system in 2006. The OSAA considered a five-classification plan at that point, but “it seemed like it was logistically a better fit” to have six classifications, according to Welter.

In essence, the OSAA split the old Class 4A into the current Class 6A and 5A and divided the old Class 2A into the current Class 3A and 2A.

“If we had gone to five classifications, we were drawing lines and affecting a whole bunch of people,” Welter said. “One of our goals was to make as few changes as possible. As it turned out, when we went to six, we affected fewer schools.”

Adopting a five-classification system would require the OSAA to draw new enrollment lines between the classes. It would provide an opportunity to correct the imbalance in the number of schools in each classification, but runs the risk of dividing current leagues.

For example, Hermiston is likely to be in the big-school division while the other three schools in the Class 5A Columbia River Conference remain a notch below. A debate would follow: Should Hermiston join a league with Portland’s east metro schools or with Central Oregon schools?

“If given the choice of Portland or Bend, we would choose Portland,” Kay said.

Portland-area schools are almost certain to resist a league alliance with Hermiston. But Hood said that some districts that aren’t accustomed to long travel for league competition might have to sacrifice.

Hood would prefer that Mountain View play in a league with schools west of the Cascades, but “wherever they put us, they’re not going to like it,” he said. “We are an association of 290-some schools. We need to take care of each other.”

Considering all the moving parts, the process appears as complicated as ever.

“It’s a complex puzzle to try to put together every four years,” Welter said. “Probably the only guarantee is when all is said and done, we won’t please everyone.”